position effect
- noun
- Specialized
:
efecto de posición
- In genetic research, scientists often examine the position effect to see how gene location affects traits.
Examples
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Understanding the position effect is crucial for genetic mapping and manipulating gene function.
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The position effect can significantly influence how genes are expressed in different environmental conditions.
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Another possibility is that the target words were embedded in a sentence-internal position, whereas in the majority of prior studies, final position effects may have played a role in the degree of modulation observed.
Academic text (2011) -
Research studies such as those by Carl I. Hovland et al. and William D. Crano into the "serial position effect" indicate that an individual's ability to recall an item varies relative to that item's position within a series.
Academic text (2010)
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound literally combines 'position' (location) and 'effect' (change), so a B1 learner who knows both words would grasp that it refers to an effect related to location. However, the precise technical sense — that moving a gene within a chromosome alters its expression — is domain-specific and not fully predictable from the constituents alone, making the term only partially transparent.
Etymology
The phrase position effect comes from imagining a gene like a shop on a street: its position means its place on the street and the neighborhood around it can change its effect, or what it does. That's why the phrase means 'a gene's activity changes when you move it to a new place in the chromosome'.
